Nine Years
by scorpsifer
Summary: "It's Chinese food and art museums and Sharpie tattoos and stubbed cigarettes on the concrete, but mostly it's him and it's me and the good is always really good, but when it's bad, it's really bad. And bad always over powers good." ONE SHOT.


_**Author's Note: **__So, this is something I wrote up a while ago. It's short and not a heavy load of reading but I thought it was enough to share. Hope you guys enjoy it; feel free to chew over the story as much as you want. All comments are welcomed (:_

**_Disclaimer:_**_ Stephanie Meyer owns these characters. I just play._

* * *

I was in college and we were young and he said he loved me but I said don't.

_ "You don't want to love me. I'm leaving next year."_

But that didn't stop him. It didn't even stop me. Because I let him love me like I let any other guy love me.

I was me. Everyone knew who I was and the type of person I was and what I could do and no one seemed surprised but him when I said "I don't want this anymore."

But I was in college and we were young and I said _don't_ while he still _did_ anyway and that's how we ended up here together nine years later and I still remember how his face looked when he said that one word.

_ Don't._

We met in one of the many empty parking lots our university had; there were construction trucks everywhere because they were building a new dorm building. They had been constructing this dorm building since the time the first _Bring It On_ movie premiered in theaters.

I was a social smoker then and didn't really care about anything besides how mainstream I looked with a cigarette between my lips. It could have been because my friends doing it that I started doing it, or perhaps it could have very well been the other way around. I can't remember now.

My sophomore year, he was in one of my classes but I didn't know it. I never turned around in class. I never looked to see who answered a question. I don't even think I was there when attendance was being taken.

But one day he came up to me and my girls with his guys and one of them asked to bum a cigarette. He didn't; he stood there with his hands in his pockets, bracing the breeze that was whipping at his soft side. The whole time his buddies were chatting up my girls, he was just standing there and I was just standing there and by the end of my cigarette he asked me if we were in the same class together. I laughed because I wasn't even sure.

He was cute and smart and wore button downs and had contacts and crooked teeth but certainly not someone I would ever know on any intimate level. I liked facial hair and chest tattoos and motorcycle drivers and vodka drinkers. But he seemed as if he drank from water bottles and shaved and my young mind wasn't accustomed to anything outside my comfort-zone. I liked what I liked and there wasn't much changing that.

"Your jeans… they're cool." He motioned to the rips lining my thighs, "I like them."

"Thanks," I said.

"You shouldn't like anything about me," I added.

"You shouldn't get to know me," I continued.

"Because this is my last semester," I finished.

"I don't care." This was his promise.

During the semester he decided 'getting to know me' was worth the fourth months and I suppose I decided that that would be okay.

The first time I invited him over to my dorm, my friend of four years and roommate of two years was flustered beyond control, cleaning things. We knew it was serious because she actually put the roll of toilet paper on the metal roll on the wall—usually we just left it out, being too lazy to change the roll every time we used it up. But he laughed about it then and thought it was funny. After a while, he spent a lot of time in our dorm room and maybe my roommate got the wrong impression because thinking about it now, she always seemed to have left the room whenever he dropped by. But when she did stay in and we all squeezed on the couch, we watched movies or T.V shows or did homework or complained about school but whatever we ended up doing, we did it in 3's.

However, when my four months were up and I left, it was hard because he still continued at the university while I went north-west for the city.

I wanted to be an art student and I wanted to paint and I wanted to express myself.

He asked me this over the computer every time we spoke: "Are you expressing yourself enough?"

I never knew how to answer the question. Maybe there was good reason to it.

Sure we were opposites and sure I was a firm believer in opposites attracting but he and I were too opposite. Because when it was good, it was really good, but when it was bad, it was really bad. And bad always overpowered the good. When couples broke up, they start to reminisce on all the good stuff; that's when they usually want to get back together—they did this without remembering all the bad stuff. But for me, it was the opposite. Every time I thought back, I only remembered the bad.

That's what killed it.

Because being with him was good. I let him love me like I let the other guys love me. I was good at that. But reciprocating it? No. I was never good at that. I suppose the good was really good. Too good. He was too good.

He was the book nerd and I was the dirty painter. The dress shirt and the acid jeans. Tit and tat. Ying and yang. The good and the bad. And he was definitely the good.

So I think when it came to me saying "I don't want this anymore", it was his _don't_ that made me realize that expressing myself was maybe not all it was cracked out to be. I think I was still holding out for something that was inked up and had a dangerous profession.

After we broke up, I had finally put on those memory goggles and forced myself to think of all the good. It was stupid of me to do so. Feeling the tickled kisses on my shoulder, smelling the warmth of his body next to me in line at the store, tasting the color of his lips when he said things like "Drive safely."

When he was done with college and I was still in my final year, he came to my apartment in the city. We had Chinese food on the floor. Cartons nestled in our laps like children, our mess coating the carpet with napkins and receipts and my raddy sneakers. Dumplings and Lo Mein and toilet paper rolls not on the metal wall roll; he turned to me and said he wanted to get back together. So we got back together. On the floor, on the couch, or in the shower, we got back together. And when it was good, oh it was _really_ good.

But when it was bad, it got _worse_.

You'd think the fighting would have tipped me off but it didn't.

You'd think the not coming home until the early hours of the morning would have done something to spark a hint of madness but it didn't.

And you'd think being mad about life in general was the big blinking sign in the relationship, but sadly, I was wearing my memory goggles.

But it was when he had started working and I was still in college, it was when we were living in the same apartment together because we didn't want to be apart, it was when ironically we had been spending _a lot_ of time apart when the toilet paper roll made its way back onto the metal holder that made me realize what was going on.

Eventually I found out because secrets didn't remain secrets forever. Fooling around with another girl wasn't something that was clever or original but it hurt anyway. Apparently she wore business casual every day and always did her hair in the morning and only wore jeans on the weekends and thought History was a proper area of study to take in college. I think it was her smell that made my stomach curl. She smelt like a hospital.

She wasn't me.

I guess he liked that.

* * *

Five years done the line, he was older and I was older.

He finally got that goatee and I finally broke into my wallet for a business dress. And it wasn't Chinese food but a pack of beer and it wasn't on the couch or in the shower or on the floor but in his bed and the scratch of his beard was like a phantom rather than fingers to the skin. He didn't tip toe around me in the morning in order to get to work. I didn't tip toe around a pair of panties that weren't mine when I left his apartment.

It was different and odd and there were no more video calls over computer or cell phone conversations. It was one worded texts or brief emails; I felt the child's play die in the presence of the adult world because he was still him and I was still me and I just wanted to express myself.

It was hard making a living off of my paintings so my job at night was typing up memoirs for a retired writer. The old lady probably hated me because I chewed on her pens and wore funny looking glasses when I typed but she paid me well and it was enough to get by. But it was odd because she thought this was my profession; she had never seen one of my paintings and she didn't know who I was or what I liked to do in the day time. Only what I typed up was what she knew and what she knew was that I typed fast.

He came around every so often and it was with different women. All different shapes and sizes and some that reminded me of me and some that didn't. But he never had them for more than a few months while he had me for years. Not in his bed, but on his chain, in his jacket, in his cell phone, at close call whenever he wanted me. He was still this book nerd with better looking teeth but I was still selling my art on the street.

_Are you expressing yourself yet?_ I read from an email he sent to me late at night once.

_Don't ask me that,_ my reply a day later.

Some things happened the way that they did and at some point I was just tired. I was bitter. And I suppose I was just over it all. Eventually, it was me saying _don't_ when he called me 3 in the morning. His tone was one of surprise, like the day in freshman year when I said he shouldn't know me.

"If that's what you want, I guess," he breathed into the phone.

"Yes; that's what I want."

And that was it for a while.

Add another two years and I was sleeping in another man's bed. I was still thinking about him. It was wrong and I knew that and it hurt me but I couldn't help it. Because I felt him everywhere, on the canvases I painted on, in the words I typed out, and in the motions I moved in as I rocked against my fiancé's chest.

It was one night out of the year, nothing special about it, that I called him. His phone was disconnected and it made me believe he changed numbers for reasons I didn't have any business knowing. My fiancé was away for the weekend visiting his grandparents without for reasons I probably did have business knowing.

On my bed, the moment felt wrong and sour and I was sure at the time I could see into the bathroom, and spot the toilet roll on its metal hanger. I didn't call the number again.

I decided that would be the last time I would try to contact him.

So I let my fiancé marry me.

* * *

It was because my mother bumped into _his_ mother the other day that he got an invitation. He sits on the bride's side of the chapel now, my side, and watches me as I make my way down the aisle.

It's when the pastor starts the service that everyone sits down and watches as the white of my dress washes me out like a blanket of slush in the north. And it's when the pastor says a selective pairing of words that one body, from the bride's side, stands back up.

Nine years. Nine years since college, since we met, since it all happened.

Eight years since I moved to the city to pursue a career that had an expiration date from the beginning.

Seven years since the good was really good and the bad was really bad.

Six years since the Chinese food restaurant never had that many calls in one summer.

Five years since my bed never felt like my bed.

Four years since my paintings went on clearance at the art shop in town.

Three years since my paintings were shipped over to the thrift stores.

Two years since I made that one phone call to a disconnected number.

One year since his name barely made an appearance in my daily activity.

And now, half a second since the whole chapel gasped and I look over at him for the first time in a really _long_ time and he says those words again: "I object."

His words are laced with age and I thinks it's a song when he begins, but it's only painful to hear. He sharply expresses how his timing is bad and how this should have been done a long time ago. His mind races and it doesn't match the beating of his speech but it's okay because one can tell it's meaningful. He goes on to say that there is not a day that goes by that he doesn't think about me. How it's wrong how the universe let us end up this way though he doesn't let it take the blame for mistakes he should have handled.

When he's done, he isn't looking around for anyone's approval but my own. He ends with words that hurt.

"Just… don't."

It's quiet now.

For the first time in my life I have my hair pushed out of my face when I want it down and around my cheeks so it could swallow me whole. When it's the pastor who steps up to say something, I can barely look anywhere except at my own dying flowers.

"Well?" He's nervous, as any pastor should be.

Finally, with a jolt of my head, I look up. I shake it unwillingly.

"No," the word is soft but it's there, out in the open. "No," I say again.

It's because no matter how much I will see of his face in my sleep or speak of his name or know of him as the guy with the button-downs, there was never a future there. Not with him, not ever. Just some old Chinese food cartons and empty toilet paper rolls.

"Shall we proceed then?"

It's the only _yes_ given that night; when I turn my back to the pews, I can hear someone exit the chapel behind me. I don't look.

"Alright, do you, Isabella Swan, take this man, Edward Cullen, to be your lawfully wedded husband this man?" the pastor continues his routine as planned.

I look over at my fiance and smile.

And it's an _I do_.

No more _don'ts_.

* * *

**So... that's it. ****I hope you all enjoyed it :)**

**Feel free to leave reviews, always!**


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